Another Episodes 11 + 12 [Final]: Revelation

Right up to the very end, it kept me guessing – but to be honest I really should have seen it coming.

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Summary

Following Teshigawara’s confession that he pushed Kazami off the balcony, a series of violent deaths and accidents begin to occur all over the hotel. With a fire raging from a gas leak in the kitchen and spreading throughout the hotel, the students of Class 3 get more and more desparate with a mistaken announcement that Mei is in fact the Another, causing all the students to abandon their humanity and go straight for her. When Takako catches Mei and Kouichi on a stairwell, her haste results in her getting strung up by accident on a wire, violently hanging herself just as Akazawa turns up, causing her to target Mei and attempt to kill her.

Several students try to escape and get trapped under a falling chandelier, while Teshigawara and Mochizuki make it out with the help of Chibiki-sensei. Kazami is revealed to be alive as he tries to kill Kouichi, thinking he is the Another, but Akazawa saves him and runs off after attempting to kill Kazami. Kouichi escapes, but goes back into the building to look for Mei, finding her and Akazawa facing it off as she tries to kill her. A bolt of lightning shatters all the glass in the hotel, and most of it falls on Akazawa, pinning her to a plank and killing her. Mei goes to deal with the Another and Kouichi follows; to his horror he finds out the Another is actually Reiko, with the signs having been in front of him all along. With regret he kills Reiko, causing the class to forget about her and ending the calamity.

Episode 11 Impression

Well, talk about a complete regression from humans into uhh, students evidently gone mad with their own desire for survival, which ironically, more often than not has lead to their deaths. This episode it was more about watching people die in horrific and violent ways rather than too much plot progression, though I do hate Takako – she’s such a bitch. Sorry, she WAS such a bitch.

Automatically, she just jumps to the conclusion that Mei is the Another, which is totally unproven and wrong to boot. I don’t know whether she was trying to appear heroic, or as the “saviour”, but to publicly announce over an intercom that is somehow still working that Mei was the Another was completely uncalled for. In that sense it’s also partly Mochizuki’s fault for showing them the tape in the first place, since the saying “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” has never rung so true. Anyway, Takako was evidently not in her right mind when she eventually found Mei and Kouichi (though not a lot of people were) but her death was the epitome of irony – strangle her to death to shut her up.

Okay, so let’s recount the deaths this episode, which fittingly had the title “Makeup” (of blood, I’m guessing). Putting aside the pipe stabbings and various knife/cleaver deaths (Rena, is that you?) the guy that got burnt to death was pretty gruesome, as well as the kitchen chef I think that ended up crudely crucified over the fireplace. Ack, it’s kinda disturbing thinking about that, it’s a good thing I decided not to screencap Episode 11.

She was one of the characters I actually cared about, you know. That and the fact that her tsundere goodness has always been in some sort of competition with Mei. She didn’t go completely mad in the end, but just seemed far too violent to be in her right state of mind. Above anything, she wanted to protect Kouichi, and I have a feeling that she did step in the way of those glass shards as they fell, since there’s no other way Kouichi and Mei would have escaped without a scratch. That full-length image above reminds me of Makise Kurisu’s pose in the Steins;Gate ED, I know its a completely different circumstance but they both have red hair with lots of glass shards nearby. Also both tsundere xD

In the initial round, the people that made it out were a random girl, Teshigawara, Mochizuki and for a moment, Kouichi. I’m just wondering exactly how many people were on this trip, since it definitely seemed that more people died compared to the numbers taken in that student group photo. I mean, five at least had to have been crushed by that conveniently falling chandelier.

Mei was cute this episode. No seriously, even in a burning building with violent gory deaths she still manages to look cute. See look, I rest my case xD

So we come to the finale section of the finale – the revelation of the Another. I’m sorry guys, it’s Reiko.

NOOOOO, NOT MY REIKO THIS CAN’T BE TRUE. SAY IT AIN’T SO.

I DON’T…NO THIS IS TOO MUCH. REIKOOOOOOO~

Uuu, Reiko~

She was completely innocent! Just a BYSTANDER! Okay maybe if she wasn’t Mikami-sensei she’d be a bystander, but STILL! She’s REIKO! Kouichi’s aunt! The one that looks like K-ON’s Sawa-chan! She’s not supposed to be the Another, it should be some obscure person that no-one ever thought of- oh wait, that would fit her then. X_X

I guess the calamity got her in the end. She’d evaded it in her year, but some bastard had to push her off a cliff after she became a teacher. We should have seen all the signs – the parrot’s creepy squawking, the grandfather including Reiko in his laments, Matsunaga’s own memories of Reiko, all the inconsistencies one and a half years ago. Kouichi’s dad, Kouichi himself forgetting Akazawa and Yomiyama – all of them pointed to her, but it never actually occurred to me until it all clicked in. Guess I still need to get the hang of this deduction thing.

I loved P.A. Works’ adaptation, and the OST throughout both this episode and the series was absolutely stunning. The different tension tracks, every small noise making me jump, ominous music foreshadowing deaths, all that. But the fact there was no sound at all when Kouichi killed Reiko was an immensely effective move on their part. Man P.A. Works, you can do slice-of-life like Iroha, you can do horror like Another – what’s next?

For such a horror and gory based show though, the ending was rather abrupt and “perfect” if I may call it that, though after what they’ve been through, it’s the least they deserve for their suffering. Even so, I would have had that classic feel of satisfaction if something had caught my eye at the very end of the anime, then disappeared, as if it was never there at all…